Or: how a bunch of do-good ditties became a (marketable!) generational touchstone
With special appearances by Ween, Lou Barlow and Blind Melon
Text: Marjorie Ingall
Photos: Zoe Chan
Conjunction Junction is a busy, busy junction in 1996. Currently hooking up in a cross-media nostalgia assault are Schoolhouse Rock laser discs and videocassettes and CD-ROMs and websites and MTV specials and an official guidebookΓÇönot to mention an alterna-rock hipster tribute album featuring such luminaries as Blind Melon, Pavement and Ween (but not Weezer). ItΓÇÖs so overwhelming, I wanna use interjections! What this means, of course, is that itΓÇÖs time to reflect on the power and cultural legacy of you-know-what for gadzillions of young Americans. (DonΓÇÖt worry: weΓÇÖll set my weighty reflections to music in order to make them both vivid and memorable.)
The History
Schoolhouse Rock ran every Saturday morning on ABC from 1973­1985, which makes the core audience of nostalgic devotees 18­35 or so. (Though SR started up again in 1993, it doesn’t seem to resonate with today’s youth. I asked a bunch of 11-year-olds if they liked Schoolhouse Rock and they stared at me blankly.) So how did it all begin? Consult the point ‘n’ click timeline:
1971
ΓÇ£Schoolhouse Rock,ΓÇ¥ the Idea, is born.
An ad agency president named David B. McCall realizes that his son, who canΓÇÖt memorize a multiplication table to save his young life, can nevertheless sing the entire Rolling Stones oeuvre. Hey, thinks McCall, perhaps the devilΓÇÖs music can be used for the Greater Good! Namely, to teach math! He gives this seemingly ungroovy project to two of his agency staffers, Tom Yohe and George Newall. They call on Bob Dorough, a jazz musician and composer best known for ΓÇ£Do Not Remove This Tag,ΓÇ¥ a wacky ditty about mattress labels. At this point, the agency seeks merely a rockinΓÇÖ ΓÇ£educationalΓÇ¥ record.
1972
A period of testing and experimentation ensues. DoroughΓÇÖs songs seem to beg for a more visual treatment. Conveniently enough, the ad agencyΓÇÖs biggest account is ABC, so Yohe and Newall pitch the educational rock cartoons idea, and ABC digs it.
hyperlink = ABC digs it
The network is hesitant to give up advertising time, so the agency convinces another client, General Foods, to sponsor SR, thereby keeping ABC rich and happy and keeping General Foods, makers of sugary cereals, in parentsΓÇÖ good graces. Historical footnote: The hip ABC exec who green-lighted SR was Michael Eisner, now king of the majestically unhip Walt Disney empire.
January 6­7, 1973
SR premieres this weekend with ΓÇ£My Hero Zero,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Elementary, My Dear,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Three Is a Magic NumberΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£The Four-Legged Zoo.ΓÇ¥ Limited to 2 minutes and 58 seconds, the spots are as tight and persuasive as any good ad. Children are promptly agog.
hyperlink = any good ad
ΓÇ£Schoolhouse Rock has always been defined by the disciplines of advertising: vivid concepts, artfully framed in a very limited amount of time.ΓÇ¥
ΓÇöSchoolhouse Rock! The Official Guide
1973
The rest of the numbers make their Multiplication Rock debuts (all but pathetic outcast number one). Buoyed by their success, Yohe and Newall introduce Grammar Rock with ΓÇ£Conjunction JunctionΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£A Noun Is a Person, Place or Thing.ΓÇ¥ The latter, written and sung by a secretary named Lynn Ahrens, was the first SR not written by Bob Dorough. Ahrens was quickly promoted and went on to write 14 more Schoolhouse Rocks and, later, win five Tony Award nominations for writing the musicals, Once on This Island and My Favorite Year.
1974
A trio of taut classics debuts: ΓÇ£Verb: ThatΓÇÖs WhatΓÇÖs HappeninΓÇÖΓÇ¥ (featuring the shades-wearing, hairy-chested African-American super hero Verb), ΓÇ£Interjections!ΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here,ΓÇ¥ which introduces the intoxicating notion that adverbs can be sold in six-packs like beer.
1975
ΓÇ£Unpack Your AdjectivesΓÇ¥ and the first two America Rocks (stubbornly referred to as History Rocks by ABC) join the lineup: ΓÇ£No More KingsΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£IΓÇÖm Just a Bill.ΓÇ¥ Does anyone remember what the Bill was actually proposing in ΓÇ£IΓÇÖm Just a Bill?ΓÇ¥
hyperlink = remember
Answer: That school buses should have to stop at railroad crossings.
1976
Bicentennial fervor hits! Whooo! “The Shot Heard Round the World” makes us proud to be American (and check out the naked chick in Southern California—I hope I’m not starting a Where’s Waldo­like fervor by pointing that out). “The Preamble (We the People),” “Elbow Room” and “Sufferin’ Till Suffrage” follow.
1977
After the glory of ΓÇÿ76, thereΓÇÖs nowhere to go but down. This yearΓÇÖs entriesΓÇöΓÇ£Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£The Great American Melting Pot,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Mother NecessityΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£FireworksΓÇ¥ΓÇöare memorable chiefly for being totally unmemorable.
1978
As disco fever marginalizes rock, the SR slide continues. ΓÇ£A Victim of GravityΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£The Energy BluesΓÇ¥ (with its perky hopefulness about nuclear energy) do not distinguish themselves. ΓÇ£Interplanet JanetΓÇ¥ enters our solar system for the first time, but I am the only person who cares (then or now).
1979
The Science Rocks series: ΓÇ£Telegraph LineΓÇ¥ (used by med schools to show first-year students how the nervous system works, a somewhat terrifying thought), ΓÇ£Do the Circulation,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£The Body Machine,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Them Not-So-Dry BonesΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£Electricity, ElectricityΓÇ¥ appear in rapid, dreary succession.
1983­1984
The nadir. Scooter Computer & Mr. Chips, which NO ONE SEEMS TO REMEMBER, is a series of four lame stories about a buck-toothed skate-rat (with little knee- and elbow-pads, which seem weirdly derivative of Star Wars costumes) and his clunky old early IBM-looking PC. The Schoolhouse Rock creators blame ABC, which commissioned the series out of the delusional belief that kids were afraid of computers. No one even remembers the official titles of the Scooter episodes, because the original animation cells were destroyed in a fire. Coincidence or conspiracy?
1985
How the mighty have fallen. Thanks to the Scooter debacle (and OK, maybe Ronald Reagan, under whom the FCC relaxed its pro-quality stance on childrenΓÇÖs programming), Schoolhouse Rock disappears from TVs nationwide.
1987
Golden Book Video releases Schoolhouse Rock on videotape, with a few changes. ΓÇ£Phyllis,ΓÇ¥ a.k.a. Cloris Leachman, and a passel of chipper moppets who seem to be escapees from the road company of Annie introduce the segments. Several original numbers are cut. The creators are totally disgusted. Of Cloris Leachman, Yohe reportedly snorts, ΓÇ£SheΓÇÖs just hideous.ΓÇ¥
1989
The beginnings of the hipster renaissance can perhaps be traced to De La Soul, who sample ΓÇ£Three Is a Magic NumberΓÇ¥ on their album Three-Feet High and Rising. (ΓÇ£De La Soul posse consists of three, and thatΓÇÖs a magic number ...ΓÇ¥)
1990­1991
Interest in SR grows. The creators are invited to speak at Dartmouth College. An obsessive University of Connecticut student organizes a national campus-to-campus petition drive to bring back SR. This effort triggers a tidal wave of wistfulness.
1992
ABC listens! SR returns to the airwaves. Theater Bam, a Chicago-based company, starts performing Schoolhouse Rock Live, which later travels to the Atlantic Theater in NYC. The theater concession stands sell Pop Rocks and Pixie Stix, a pandering yet lovely gesture.
1993
Brand new Schoolhouse Rocks greet a new sugar-cereal-addled Saturday morning generation. ΓÇ£Busy PsΓÇ¥ introduces the concept of prepositions. ΓÇ£The Tale of Mister MortonΓÇ¥ teaches subjects and predicates.
1994
Reality Bites, the most aggressively marketed slacker film ever, puts the badge of formal Gen-X approval on SR by showing putatively cool, alienated pudgeball Ethan Hawke belting out ΓÇ£Conjunction JunctionΓÇ¥ on a rooftop. The presence of Janeane Garofalo does not lessen the pain of watching this.
